27 AUGUST – THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Dominical series, formerly counted from the feast of Saint Peter or the Apostles, never went beyond this Sunday. The feast of Saint Laurence gave its name to those which follow, though that name began with even the ninth Sunday for the years when Easter was nearest the Spring equinox. When, on the contrary, that Solemnity was kept at its almost latest date, the weeks began from today to be counted as the Weeks of the seventh month (September). The Ember Days of the Autumn quarter sometimes occur even this week, while in other years they may be as late as the eighteenth. We will speak of them when we come to the Seventeenth Sunday, for it is in the week following that that the Roman Missal inserts them. In the Western Church the Thirteenth Sunday takes its name from the Gospel of the Ten Lepers which is read in the Mass: the Greeks, who count it as the Thirteenth of Saint Matthew, read on it the parable of the vineyard, whose labourers, though called at different hours of the day, all receive the same pay (Matthew xx.).

Now that she is in possession of the promises so long waited for by the world — the Church loves to repeat the words with which the just men of the Old Law used to express their sentiments. Those just men were living during the gloomy period when the human race was seated in the shadow of death. We are under incomparably happier circumstances. We are blessed with graces in abundance. Eternal Wisdom has spared us the trials our forefathers had to contend with by giving us to live in the period which has been enriched by all the mysteries of salvation being fulfilled. There is a danger, however, and our Mother the Church does her utmost to avert us from falling into it. It is the danger of forgetting all these blessings of ours. Ingratitude is the necessary outcome of forgetfulness, and today’s Gospel justly condemns it. On this account, the Epistle remind us of the time when man had nothing to cheer him but hope: a promise had, indeed, been made to him of a sublime covenant which was, at some distant future, to be realised. But, meanwhile, he was very poor, was a prey to the wiles of Satan, his cause was to be tried by divine justice, and yet he prayed for loving mercy.

Epistle – Galatian iii. 16‒22

Brethren, to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He said not, And to his seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to your seed, which is Christ. Now this I say, that the testament which was confirmed by God, the law which was made after four hundred and thirty years does not dis-annul to make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. Why, then, was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom He made the promise: being ordained by Angels in the hands of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one: but God is one. Was the law, then, against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given which could give life, verily justice should have been by the law. But the scriptures has concluded all under sin that the promise by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“Look up to heaven, and number the stars, if you can! So will your seed be! (Genesis xv. 5) Abraham was almost 100 years old (Romans iv. 19) and Sarah’s barrenness deprived him of all natural hope of posterity when these words were spoken to him by God. Abraham, nevertheless, believed God, says the Scripture, “and it was reputed to him unto justice” (Genesis xv. 6). And when later on that same faith (Hebrews xi. 17‒19) would have led him to sacrifice on the mount that son of the promise, his one only hope, God renewed his promise and added: “In your seed will all the nations of the Earth be blessed” (Genesis xii. 18).

It is now that the promise is fulfilled. The event justifies Abraham’s faith. He believed against all hope, trusting to that God who “quickens the dead and calls those things that are not, as those that are and” (Romans iv. 17, 18) according to the expression of John the Baptist, from the very stones of the Gentile world there rise up in all places children to Abraham (Matthew iii. 9). His faith, firm and at the same time so simple, gave to God the glory (Romans iv. 20) which He looks for from His creatures. Man can add nothing to the divine perfections, but — agreeably to God’s own words — though he sees them not directly here below, he acknowledges those perfections by adoring and loving them. He makes his faith tell upon his whole life and this use which he freely makes of his faculties, this voluntary devotedness of an intelligent being, magnifies God by adding to His extrinsic glory.

Following in Abraham’s steps (Romans iv. 12) there have come those multitudes born for that Heaven of faith which he showed to the whole Earth. They live by faith (Romans i. 17) and thereby in all their acts they give to God the homage of confession and praise through His Son Christ Jesus. And like Abraham they receive in return a blessing, a benediction, of an ever increasing justice (Romans iv. 23, 24; Galatians iii. 9). The magnificent development of the Church which gives this new posterity to Abraham is greater and more visible since the fall of Israel. In countries the remotest, in the midst of cities that once were all pagan, we see crowds of men, women and children imitating Abraham (Genesis xii. 1): that is, at Heaven’s call, leaving, if not their country, at least everything that once made Earth dear to them: and like him, trusting in the fidelity and power of God to fulfil His promises (Romans iv. 20, 21), they live as strangers amidst their neighbours, yea, and in their very homes, using this world as though they did not use it (1 Corinthians vii. 31). In the tumult of cities as in the desert, in the midst of the vain pleasures of the world, whose fashion and figure passes away (1 Corinthians viii. 31) — they have no other thought than that of the unseen realities (Hebrews xi. 1): no other care than that of pleasing God (1 Corinthians vii. 32). They take to themselves the word that was spoken to their father: “Walk before me and be perfect!” (Genesis xvii. 1) and in truth it was to all of them that it was spoken. It was the condition in the alliance concluded by God with those His faithful servants of all ages in the person of the grand Patriarch who was not only their progenitor, but their model too. And God responds also to their faith, either by private manifestations or by the still surer voice of His Scriptures (2 Peter i. 19), saying: “Fear not! I am your protector and your reward exceeding great! (Genesis xv. 1).

Truly then the benediction of Abraham has been poured forth on the Gentiles (Galatians iii. 18). Christ Jesus, the true Son of the promise, the only seed of salvation, has by faith in His Resurrection (Romans iv. 24) assembled from every nation (Galatians iii. 28) them that are of goodwill (Luke ii. 14), making them all one in Him, making them, like Himself, children of Abraham (Galatians iii. 29), and what is better still, children of God (Galatians iv. 5‒7). For the benediction that was promised at the beginning of the alliance was the Holy Ghost Himself (Galatians iii. 14), the spirit of adoption of children that came down into our hearts to make us all heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ (Romans viii. 15‒17). O mighty power of Faith, which breaks down the former walls of division, unites nations together (Ephesians ii. 14‒18) and substitutes the love and freedom of children of the Most High for the law of bondage and fear (Romans viii. 2)!

And yet, grand as was this spectacle of the Gentiles becoming incorporated into the chosen race and being made sharers in Christ of the holy promises (Ephesians iii. 6) — it did not please all people. The carnal Jew who boasts of having Abraham for his father though he cares little about imitating his works (John viii. 39) — the Circumcised who vaunts the bearing in his flesh the sign of a Faith which dwells not in his heart (Romans iv. 11) — these men who have rejected Christ now reject His members and would fain destroy His Church or at least trammel it. They are enraged at seeing crowding in, from every portion of the globe (Luke xiii. 29), that immense concourse which their vile jealousy has vainly sought to keep back. While their wounded pride kept them from going in (Luke xv. 28), the Gentiles were sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the Prophets at the banquet of God’s kingdom (Luke xiii. 28): the last became the first (Luke xiii. 30). Even to the end of time Israel — who, by his own obstinacy, has forfeited his ancient glory — will continue to be the enemy of this spiritual posterity of Abraham which has supplanted him (Genesis xxvii. 36), but his persecutions against the children of the promise and of the lawful Bride will but result in showing that he is, as Saint Paul says, the son of Agar, the son of the bond-woman who, together with her child, is excluded from the inheritance and kingdom (Galatians iv. 22‒31).

He prefers to refuse the liberty offered him by the Lord rather than acknowledge the definitive abrogation his now dead Law. Be it so. His hatred will not induce the children of the Church (who are prefigured by Sarah the free-woman) to reject the grace of their God for the sake of pleasing their enemy. It will not induce them to abandon the justice of Faith and the riches of the Spirit, and the life in Christ, in order to go back again to the yoke of slavery (Galatians v. 1) which, let the Jew do what he will, was broken into pieces by the Cross he himself set up on Calvary (Galatians ii. 19‒21). Up to the last the true Jerusalem, the free city, our mother — she that was once the barren woman but now is so glad a Bride with her children around her — yes, she will meet the superannuated, yet ever busy, pretensions of the Synagogue by reading to her assembled sons and daughters the Epistle we are having today. Up to the last, Saint Paul, in her name —speaking of the law of Sinai, which was made known to its subjects through the mediation of Moses and the Angels — will prove its inferiority as compared to the covenant made by Abraham directly with God. Each year, as emphatically as on the day he wrote his Epistle, Paul will declare the transient character of that legislation which came 430 years after a promise which could not be changed. Neither was such legislation to continue when the time should come for that Son of Abraham to appear, from whom the world was waiting to receive the promised benediction.

But what is to be said of the incapability of the Mosaic ministration to give man strength and enable him to rise up from his fall? The Gospel, on which we were meditating eight days back, and which formerly was assigned to this present Sunday, gave a symbolical and striking commentary on the uselessness of the Old Law in regard to this. At the same time it showed us the remedial power which resided in Christ, and was by Him transmitted to the ministers of the New Law. “Every portion of the Office of the thirteenth Sunday,” says Abbot Rupert, “bears on the history of that Samaritan whose name signifies keeper. It is our Lord Jesus Christ who, by His Incarnation, comes to the rescue of the man whom the Old Law was not able to keep from harm. And when this Jesus leaves the world, He consigns the poor sufferer to the care of the Apostles and apostolic men in the house of the Church. The intentional selection of this Gospel for today throws a great light on our Epistle, as also on the whole Letter to the Galatians, from which it is taken. Thus, the Priest and the Levite of the Parable are a figure of the Law and their passing by the half-dead man, seeing him indeed, but without making an attempt to heal him, is expressive of what that Law did. True, it did not go counter to God’s promises, but of itself it could justify no man. A physician who does not himself intend to visit a patient will sometimes send a servant who is expert in the knowledge of the causes of the malady, yet who has not the skill needed for mixing the remedy required, but can merely tell the sick man what diet and what drinks he must avoid if he would prevent his ailment from causing death. Such was the Law, set, as the Epistle tells us, because of transgressions, as a simple safeguard until such time as there should come the good Samaritan, the heavenly Physician. Having from his very first coming into this world fallen among robbers, Man is stripped of his supernatural goods and is covered with the wounds inflicted on him by original sin. If he do not abstain from actual sins, from those transgressions against which the Law was set as a monitor, he runs the risk of dying altogether.”

Gospel – Luke xvii. 11‒19

At that time, as Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered into a certain town, there met Him ten then that were lepers, who stood afar off and lifted up their voice saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Whom, when He saw, He said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And it came to pass that as they went, they were made clean. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back with a loud voice glorifying God: and he fell on his face before his feet, giving thanks: and this was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, “Were not ten made clean? And where are the nine? There is no one found to return, and give glory to God, but this stranger.” And he said to Him, “Arise, go your way, for your faith has made you whole.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Samaritan Leper, cured of that hideous malady which is an apt figure of sin, in company with nine lepers of Jewish nationality, represents the despised race of Gentiles who were at first admitted by stealth, so to say, and by extraordinary privilege, into a share of the graces belonging to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew xv. 24). The conduct of these ten men on occasion of their miraculous cure is in keeping with the attitude assumed by the two people they typify, regarding the salvation offered to the world by the Son of God. It is a fresh demonstration of what the Apostle says: “All are not Israelites, that are of Israel. Neither are all they who are the seed of Abraham, children.” “But,” says the Scripture (Genesis xxi. 12), “in Isaac will your seed be called,” that is to say, not they who are the children of the flesh, are the children of God: but they that are the children of the promise are counted for the seed (Romans ix. 6‒8).

They are born of the faith of Abraham and are, in the eyes of the Lord, His true progeny. Our holy Mother the Church is never tired of this subject, the comparison of the Two Testaments and the contrast there is between the two people. We deem it our duty, before proceeding further, to explain how this is, for there are many persons who cannot understand what benefit can come to us Christians from hearing this subject preached to us.

The kind of spirituality which, with many of us, has nowadays been substituted for the liturgical life so thoroughly lived in, and so precious, to our Catholic ancestors, gives a certain dis-relish for the ideas which the Church so perseveringly brings before them during so many of her Sundays. They have become habituated to live in an atmosphere of very limited truth. It is all subjective as well as little, and they consider it a very excellent thing to forget all other teaching except what they happen to possess, and beyond which it is a trouble to go. With Christians of this class it is not surprising that they feel puzzled at finding the Church continually urging them to take an interest in a long past which they call of no practical utility to them! But the interior life, truly worthy of the name, is not what these good people imagine. No school of spirituality, either now or ever, made the ideal of virtue consist in indifference for those great historical facts which are evidently so precious in the eyes of the Church, and of God Himself. And what is the usual result of this isolating themselves from their Mother’s most cherished appreciations? It is that by this determined shutting themselves up in their own private prayers they, by a just punishment, lose sight of the true end of prayer, which is union with and love of God. Their meditation is deprived of that element of intimate and fruitful converse with God which is assigned it by all the masters of the spiritual life. It soon becomes an unproductive exercise of analysis and reasoning in which there is nothing but abstract conclusions.

Now when God mercifully invited men to the divine nuptials by manifesting to them His Word, it was not by abstraction that He gave to our Earth this the Son of His own eternal Substance. As to His divinity, men could not in their present state see it in a direct way. Had then God shown us in this pretended abstract way, that eternal Son of His, in whom are found all beauty, and warmth and life — it would have been imperfect and cold. This He did not do, but as Saint Paul tells us, He manifested, He showed, the great mystery of godliness in the Flesh (1 Timothy iii. 16). The Word became a living soul (Genesis ii. 7). Eternal Truth assumed to Himself a Body that so He might converse with men (Baruch iii. 38) and grow up like one of themselves (Luke ii. 52). And when that Body which eternal Truth was to hold as His own forever was taken up in glory (1 Timothy iii. 16) — the Church, the Bride of this Man-God, the bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh (Ephesians v. 30‒32) continued in the world this manifestation of God by the members of Christ. She continued that historical development of the Word which is only to cease when time is no more. This manifestation, this development, surpasses all human calculations and reveals fresh aspects of the Wisdom of God even to the Angels themselves (Ephesians iii. 10). Undoubtedly, a real regard is to be had for those axioms to which great minds have reduced the principles of science in an abstract logical order quite independently of history and facts: but neither with God nor with man has this sort of petrified theorising anything in it of the life, the influence, the activity of substantial truth. In the Church, as in God, truth is life and light (John i. 4). Her grand Credo would never ring so triumphantly as it does through our churches, it would never make its way so irresistibly up to Heaven, if it were but a bare series of true definitions and phrases. Its superhuman power comes from each of its articles, almost each of its words, teeming with the blood of martyrs upon it and radiant for the Church and for God with the splendour of toils, and sufferings, and combats of thousands of sainted Confessors and Doctors, the very aristocracy, that is, of human nature ennobled by Baptism, whose living is to be the completion of the Body of Christ here below (Colossians i. 24; ii. 19).

The subject is too full to be treated of here but this much is irresistible — that after the master-fact of the Incarnation of the Word who came upon our Earth to manifest God through the ages of time by Christ and His members (2 Corinthians iv. 10, 11), there is not one which is more important, not one which has been and still is so dear to God, as the vocation of the two peoples that were successively called by Him to the blessing of an alliance with Him. The gifts and vocations of God are, as the Apostle expresses it, without repentance or regret on His part. Those Jews who are now His enemies because they reject the Gospel are still called carissimi, they are still the beloved and dearly beloved, because of their Fathers (Romans xi. 28, 29). For the same reason a time will come, and the whole world is waiting for it, when the denial of Judah being revoked and his iniquities blotted out, the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be literally fulfilled (Romans xi. 25‒27). Then the divine unity of the two Testaments will be made evident, and the two peoples themselves will be made one under their one head, Christ Jesus (Ephesians ii. 14). The covenant of God with man being then fully realised such as He had designed it in His eternal wisdom — the Earth having yielded its fruit (Psalm lxvi. 7) — the world having done its work — the sepulchres will give back their dead (Romans xi. 15) and History will cease here on Earth, leaving glorified human nature to bloom in unreserved fullness of life under God’s complacent eye.

The truths, then, which are again brought before our notice by today’s Gospel are anything but dry or old-fashioned. Nothing is so grand and we must add there is nothing more practical in this season of the year, for it is the season that is consecrated to the mysteries of the Unitive Life. After all, in what primarily does union between God and man consist but in unanimity of the divine and human minds? Now we know that the divine mind has manifested all its designs in the respective history of the two Testaments and the two Peoples, and that the final result which is to bring these two histories to their close is the one only end which infinite Love was in the beginning, and is now, and will for ever be, proposing to fulfil. The Church, therefore, far from showing herself to be not up to the present age by recurring continually to truths such as these, is but clearly proving herself to be the most intelligent Bride of Jesus — is but evincing the changeless lovely youthfulness of a heart which ever beats in unison with that of her Spouse.

Let us now resume the literal explanation of our Gospel. As we were observing on a previous Sunday, our Jesus here again wishes rather to give us a useful teaching than to manifest His divine power. It is for this purpose that He does not cure these ten lepers who besought Him to have mercy on them as on another occasion He cured one who was suffering from the same misery. To this latter who besought Him, He restored cleanliness by a few words. This was at the beginning of His public life. He said: “Be made clean, and forthwith the leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew viii. 3). But the lepers of our Gospel is an event that took place in the latter portion of our Lord’s sojourn among men: and they are made clean only while on their way to show themselves to the priests. Jesus sends them to the priests, just as He had done in the previous case, and thus, from the beginning to the close of His mortal life, He gives an example of the respect which was to be paid to the Old Law so long as it was not abrogated. That Law gave to the sons of Aaron the power, not of curing, but of discerning leprosy, and passing judgement on its being cured or not (Leviticus viii.).

The time, however, is now come for a Law that is to be far above that of Sinai, and it has a priesthood whose judgements are not to be concerning the state of the body but, by pronouncing the sentence of absolution, is to effectually remove the leprosy of souls. The cure which the ten lepers felt coming on them before they had reached the priests ought to have sufficed to show them, in Jesus, the power of the new priesthood which had been foretold by the Prophets (Isaias lxvi. 21‒23). The power which, by thus forestalling it in their favour, surpasses the authority of the ancient ministration is, or should be, evidence enough of the superior dignity of Him who exercises it. If only they were in suitable dispositions for the sacred rites which are going to be used in the ceremony of their purification (Leviticus xiv. 1‒32) — the Holy Ghost who, heretofore, had inspired the prophetic details of the mysterious function about to be celebrated, would enable them to understand the signification of the expiatory sparrow whose blood, being sprinkled upon the living water, sets free by the wood its fellow sparrow. That first bird typifies our Lord Jesus Christ who likens Himself, in the Psalm, to the lonely sparrow (Psalm ci. 8). His immolation on the Cross which gives to water the power of cleansing souls, communicates to the other sparrows, His Brethren (Psalm lxxxiii. 4), the purity of the Blood divine.

But the Jew is far from being ready for understanding these great mysteries. And yet the Law had been given to him that it might serve him as a hand leading him to Christ, and without exposing him to err (Galatians iii. 24). It was a signal favour granted him, not from any merits of his own, but because of his Fathers (Deuteronomy iv. 37; ix. 4‒6). The favour was all the more precious, inasmuch as it was bestowed at a time when the tradition regarding a future Redeemer was almost entirely lost by the bulk of mankind. Gratitude should have been uppermost in the heart of Judah but pride took its place. He was so taken up with the honour that had been put on him that it made him lose all desire for the Messiah. He cannot endure the thought that a time will come when the Sun of Justice, having risen for the whole Earth, the limited advantage which was given to a few during the hours of night will be eclipsed by the bright noon of a light which all vie to enjoy. He, therefore, proclaims, that the Old Law is definitive, though the Law protests itself to be but transitory. He, therefore, insists on the perpetuity of the reign of types and shadows. He lays it down as a dogma that no divine intervention can ever equal that made on Sinai: that every future prophet, every Sent of God, must be inferior to Moses: that all possible salvation is in the Law, and that from it alone flows every grace.

This explains to us how it was that of the ten men cured of leprosy by Jesus nine of them are found who have not even the remotest thought of coming to their Deliverer to thank Him: these nine are Jews. Jesus, to their minds, is a mere disciple of Moses, a bare instrument of favours holding his commission from Sinai, and as soon as they have gone through the legal formality of their purification, they take it that all their obligations to God are paid. The Samaritan, the despised Gentile whose sufferings have given him that humility which makes the sinner clear-sighted — he is the only one who recognises God by His divine works, and gives Him thanks for His favours. How many ages of apparent abandonment, of humiliation and suffering must pass over Judah too before he will recognise and adore his God, and confess to him his sins, and give him his devoted love, and, like this stranger, hear Jesus pronounce his pardon, and say: “Arise! Go your way! Your faith has made you whole and saved you!